Welcome to Extra Student Loan Money.com…

Reselling things for profit:Probably the best decision I ever made to pay off my loans faster.

Welcome to my blog! It has been in the works for quite a while, but I finally sat down to write my first post and join the blogosphere (again…fresh…anew). This blog encompasses a little bit of everything, but its main focus is to document my journey towards paying off my student loans — and hopefully before 2023.

How it All Began…

I won’t bore you with how I racked up student loan debt, but I will say that I had no intentions of ever taking out loans that amounted to this amount of money. In fact, I had a full-ride UC Regents academic grant to attend college. It covered all but $500 of my tuition. Being 18 without $500 to my name, I decided that I would take out a loan to cover that remaining balance.

..I thought that would be the end of my encounter with student loans.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Fast forward a year later, I left the UC system and started attending a CSU (California State University) college. Two years later and $12k poorer, I graduated.

I Hate Debt…With a Passion!

Fast forward to today. I’ve been out of college for over 6 years, but looking at the balance on my student loans, you would not know that. That balance will not budge! Although I made some poor financial decisions between 18-21 years of age, one of which required me to rehabilitate my student loans (successfully I might add), I feel as though I should have made a little progress, but instead it seems as though my balance is decreasing at a snails pace.

I’m just tired of student loans. And because I have no other consumer debt (e.g. car loan, credit card debt, etc), I am even more motivated to get rid of it!

One day I sat down and crunched some numbers. By only paying the minimum $180 per month, my loans will not be paid off until June 2023. That is 9 years from now.

That is scary. And now that I am a stay at home mom (SAHM), that is completely unacceptable. According to those calculations, my daughter will be 10 years old once I make my last student loan payment. In addition, I will have paid several thousands of dollars in student loan interest.

Where Does eBay & Amazon FBA Come In?

I have been selling on eBay off and on in some capacity since 2004. It wasn’t until late 2012 that I resumed selling on eBay again. Soon after my daughter was born in 2013, I sold quite a few of her cloth diapers on eBay. I was shocked at how quickly they sold and how I was able to generate over $500 in a matter of a week. I was hooked.

After seeing all of the money I was bringing in, my husband challenged me to pay off my student loans with those funds.

After exhausting all of the inventory in our home, I started reselling merchandise that I bought deeply discounted at regular big box stores. It wasn’t until I started joining Facebook groups that I got wind of the idea of “thrifting for profit” and using Fulfillment by Amazon (Amazon FBA).

I have been hooked since.

My goal is to make an additional student loan payment each month (on top of my minimum payment) in the hopes that I can pay off my loans as quickly as possible. At the time of writing this post, I set aside an extra $200 per month in a savings account for my student loans.

My ultimate goals is to set aside $500 per month. If I can reach this goal, my loans will be paid off by 2016 (in 2 years) as opposed to 2023 (in 9 years). I know it can be done. That’s why I’m blogging about.

I just found your blog. I am new to FBA, drowning out in student loan debt, & as contingent faculty just lost my FT teaching contract due to budget cuts. I thought I was doing the right thing to “invest” in my education… By far the worst decision I ever made.